News from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

[Rick]

NASA'S Chandra Finds Nearest Pair Of Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon.

The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-11-278.html

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Suggests Rare Explosion Created Our Galaxy's Youngest Black Hole

New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star.

The remnant, called W49B, is about a thousand years old as seen from Earth and located about 26,000 light-years away.

"W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy," said Laura Lopez, who led the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It appears its parent star ended its life in a way that most others don't."

More: http://chandra.si.edu/press/13_releases/press_021313.html

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Turns Up Black Hole Bonanza in Galaxy Next Door

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unprecedented bonanza of black holes in the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way.

Using more than 150 Chandra observations, spread over 13 years, researchers identified 26 black hole candidates, the largest number to date, in a galaxy outside our own. Many consider Andromeda to be a sister galaxy to the Milky Way. The two ultimately will collide, several billion years from now.

"While we are excited to find so many black holes in Andromeda, we think it's just the tip of the iceberg," said Robin Barnard of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., and lead author of a new paper describing these results. "Most black holes won't have close companions and will be invisible to us."

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/bonanza.html

[Rick]

Chandra & XMM-Newton Provide Direct Measurement of Distant Black Hole's Spin

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly. This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time.

More: http://chandra.si.edu/press/14_releases/press_030514.html and http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2014/rxj1131/

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Observatory Delivers New Insight Into Formation of Star Clusters

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes, astronomers have made an important advance in the understanding of how clusters of stars come into being.

The data show early notions of how star clusters are formed cannot be correct. The simplest idea is stars form into clusters when a giant cloud of gas and dust condenses. The center of the cloud pulls in material from its surroundings until it becomes dense enough to trigger star formation. This process occurs in the center of the cloud first, implying that the stars in the middle of the cluster form first and, therefore, are the oldest.

However, the latest data from Chandra suggest something else is happening. Researchers studied two clusters where sun-like stars currently are forming – NGC 2024, located in the center of the Flame Nebula, and the Orion Nebula Cluster.  From this study, they discovered the stars on the outskirts of the clusters actually are the oldest.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/star-cluster-formation.html

[Rick]

NASA'S Chandra Observatory Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth

he same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars' birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity.  These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are immersed in gas with temperatures of millions of degrees.

This hot gas, which is the heftiest component of the galaxy clusters aside from unseen dark matter, glows brightly in X-ray light detected by Chandra. Over time, the gas in the centers of these clusters should cool enough that stars form at prodigious rates. However, this is not what astronomers have observed in many galaxy clusters.

"We knew that somehow the gas in clusters is being heated to prevent it cooling and forming stars. The question was exactly how," said Irina Zhuravleva of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the study that appears in the latest online issue of the journal Nature. "We think we may have found evidence that the heat is channeled from turbulent motions, which we identify from signatures recorded in X-ray images."

More from NASA

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Detects Record-Breaking Outburst from Milky Way's Black Hole

On September 14, 2013, astronomers caught the largest X-ray flare ever detected from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This event, which was captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, was 400 times brighter than the usual X-ray output from Sgr A*, as described in our press release. The main portion of this graphic shows the area around Sgr A* in a Chandra image where low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are red, green, and blue respectively. The inset box contains an X-ray movie of the region close to Sgr A* and shows the giant flare, along with much steadier X-ray emission from a nearby magnetar, to the lower left. A magnetar is a neutron star with a strong magnetic field. A little more than a year later, astronomers saw another flare from Sgr A* that was 200 times brighter than its normal state in October 2014.

More: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/sgra/

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Observatory Finds Cosmic Showers Halt Galaxy Growth

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found that the growth of galaxies containing supermassive black holes can be slowed down by a phenomenon referred to as cosmic precipitation.

Cosmic precipitation is not a weather event, as we commonly associate the word -- rain, sleet, or snow. Rather, it is a mechanism that allows hot gas to produce showers of cool gas clouds that fall into a galaxy. Researchers have analyzed X-rays from more than 200 galaxy clusters, and believe that this gaseous precipitation is key to understanding how giant black holes affect the growth of galaxies.

"We know that precipitation can slow us down on our way to work," said Mark Voit of Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, lead author of the paper that appears in the latest issue of Nature. "Now we have evidence that it can also slow down star formation in galaxies with huge black holes."

Astronomers have long pursued the quest to understand how supermassive black holes, which can be millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun, affect their host galaxies.

More from NASA
See also: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/a2597/

[Rick]

NASA's Chandra Captures X-Ray Echoes Pinpointing Distant Neutron Star

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the largest and brightest set of rings from X-ray light echoes ever observed. These extraordinary rings, produced by an intense flare from a neutron star, provide astronomers a rare chance to determine how far across the Milky Way galaxy the star is from Earth.

The rings appear as circles around Circinus X-1, a double star system in the plane of our galaxy containing a neutron star, the dense remnant of a massive star pulverized in a supernova explosion. The neutron star is in orbit with another massive star, and is shrouded by thick clouds of interstellar gas and dust. Circinus X-1 is also the source of a surprisingly powerful jet of high-energy particles.

"It's really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only have a handful of methods," said Sebastian Heinz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who led the study. "But just as bats use sonar to triangulate their location, we can use the X-rays from Circinus X-1 to figure out exactly where it is."

More from NASA
See also: http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2015/cirx1/

[Rick]

NASA's FY2025 budget request means tough times ahead for Chandra and Hubble

NASA has published its budget request for the fiscal year 2025, and it is not good news for the Hubble Space Telescope or the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The total budget request is unchanged from FY2023's Operating Plan, meaning that it had to make some tough decisions to accommodate increases elsewhere in the agency's remit. This means that should things go through as planned, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is in line for some cuts while Chandra's funding is set to dwindle to what NASA described as "minimal operations."

To put this in context, Chandra has enjoyed a prodigiously long mission, having managed more than 24 years of a planned five-year mission in orbit. It was deployed from Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999 and has been a boon to X-ray astronomers ever since.

Those days, however, seem to be coming to an end. Although the spacecraft continues to return useful science, ever-tightening purse strings dictate that NASA managers need to balance the cost of keeping Chandra running against future missions and other operational needs.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/12/nasas_fy2025_budget_request_means/